40 years ago, holiday storm ravaged Northeast Ohio

The Plain DealerOn July 4, 1969, more than 100 trees in Lakewood were blown over in less than 10 minutes when thunderstorms in central Lake Erie suddenly headed south toward Lakewood Park, where 20,000 people were celebrating.

CLEVELAND -- Friday, July 4, 1969, was the perfect day for a perfect storm.

It was warm and humid with a high of 82 degrees and humidity of 87 percent. People were in their back yards drinking beer and grilling hot dogs. Families gathered in parks to play softball and at beaches to swim. Folks relaxed on blankets, listening to live music, waiting for nighttime fireworks to begin.

Storms moved over central Lake Erie all day, from west to east. In Northeast Ohio, the sun was out, and the air was moist; nothing unusual for July. Cleveland weatherman Dick Goddard had just finished the 6 p.m. news. He had another broadcast at 11 p.m.

He had been puzzled by radar reports. Clouds were moving over Lake Erie in a meteorological pattern called "differential advection," which occurs when air masses of different temperatures and altitudes move over one another in a way that can cause high winds. He usually relied on the weather radar at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, an out-of-date system from World War II. The Detroit National Weather Service had a more current radar system. Maybe the weather watchers there knew something more.

Goddard was walking to the China Lane restaurant on Euclid Avenue with newsmen Marty Ross and Murray Stewart to get some dinner. He mentioned the crazy clouds.

"I announced that the end of the world was at hand," Goddard remembered saying in jest.

At 7:30 p.m., the trajectory of the distant, heavy weather over the lake took a hard and fast turn to the south. The giant cloud stacks, 60,000 feet high, suddenly began racing toward land. Wind speeds were building to more than 100 miles per hour.

Lakewood Mayor Robert Lawther was sitting with his wife in front of the bandstand at Lakewood Park enjoying the live music. A group of boys from St. Ignatius High School in a band called Revolution began their set with a cover of "I Got A Line On You" by the band Spirit.

The Plain DealerTwo people died in Lakewood Park and three died at Cleveland's Edgewater Park on July 4, 1969. And two Cleveland men were electrocuted by downed power lines. Following the storm, the region was pounded by 12 hours of thunderstorms, resulting in 35 more deaths, mostly from flooding.

The Fourth was always a big holiday for Lakewood. More than 20,000 people from all over the western suburbs had come to the park to see the fireworks that would get under way when it got dark at 9:30 p.m.

The Dolejs (pronounced Dolesh) family from Woodward Avenue in Lakewood arrived in time to find a parking place. Originally from Czechoslovakia, Anthony, an architect, and his wife, Beatrice, were there with their five kids: Tony, 20; Marcella, 19; twins Dan and Dagmar, 14; and John, 10.

John, now 50 and employed by U.S. Airways, remembered that while the rest of the family walked into the park to find a place to watch the fireworks, his big sister Dagmar, a bright, independent girl, asked if she could stay behind at the bandstand and listen to the music. There was a dance contest following the band. Her father said OK but told her to join them later when the contest was over.

At 7:33 p.m., local forecasters received their first alert about the possibility of a bad storm. The captain of a ship on Lake Erie 10 miles north of Lorain reported 110-mph winds heading toward shore. At 7:45 p.m., the National Weather Service told the Emergency Broadcast System -- the network in charge of alerting television and radio stations in cases of danger -- to stand by because the weather conditions soon would be upgraded to a tornado warning.

For reasons that remain unknown, the warning was never issued.

At Lakewood Park, neighborhood kids John McDonnell and Tom Lamb, both 13, saw an ominous wall of black clouds advancing rapidly across the lake toward the park. While adults started moving toward their cars, the two boys ran toward the lake and the incoming wind. The formation looked cool and scary.

The temperature suddenly dropped 10 degrees and a light rain began to fall. An unearthly quiet descended over the park. Then the sky went dark, and people heard what sounded like the roar of a train. A blistering downpour that turned horizontal, carrying leaves and branches from trees and other debris, hit hard. People began shrieking and running. Visibility was zero. Then, one after another, trees began falling, upending their roots.

Scared witless, John McDonnell and Tom Lamb turned and raced from the park. A large oak tree fell between them, and they lost sight of each other. Power lines were snapping and buzzing; lawn chairs, blankets and picnic packings all became projectiles in the full-force gale.

Everything was chaos. Only screams pierced the deafening sound of the howling wind.

Tom Kelly recalled that his late father, Don Kelly, was in his Lake Road home, just across the street from the park, during the storm. Don and his wife, Marietta, had just gotten a dozen children -- their own, some cousins and neighborhood kids -- safely into the basement.

As Don Kelly looked out his back door to make sure everyone was inside, he saw something alarming: His 2-week-old Mercury Marquis sat in the driveway as a nearby oak tree whipped back and forth like a celery stalk.

He ran for his keys, but before he could get out the back door, his wife stopped him. Moments later, the 100-foot oak fell across the front of the car, crushing the roof, windshield and engine block. The new car was totaled. Marietta Kelly had saved her husband's life.

The Plain DealerDagmar Dolejs (pictured), 14, died when a tree in Lakewood Park fell on her during the storm on July 4, 1969. Greta Schwartz, 16, also died in the park that day. Both girls were buried the same day at Holy Cross Cemetery, where the families consoled one another.

Dealing with aftermath of raging storm

In 10 minutes, the storm was over.

The wind died, and the rain stopped. Lakewood police and firefighters were soon in the park keeping the remaining crowd from being electrocuted by the downed power lines. They asked drivers to take strangers into their cars and drive them out of the park.

John McDonnell and Tom Lamb met up at McDonnell's house, two doors east of the Kelly house. Neither had so much as a scratch.

The Dolejs family stood by their car waiting for Dagmar. After a couple of hours, the police told them to go home. Police said they probably had put their daughter in another car and sent her out of the park. Most likely she was already home. The family reluctantly got in the car and left.

But Dagmar wasn't home. The oldest son, Tony, spent the night driving from the Lakewood police station to Lakewood Hospital trying to find his little sister. He drove to the homes of his sister's friends. He listened to radio reports.

He learned that a girl died during the storm at Lakewood Park. Her name was Greta Schwartz. She was killed by a falling tree. Three people were killed by trees at Cleveland's Edgewater Park during the storm. And two Cleveland men were electrocuted by downed power lines.

Finally, near dawn, Tony Dolejs heard from a policeman about an unidentified body at the Cuyahoga County coroner's office. He drove to the corner's office immediately. Liberty Boulevard (now Martin Luther King Drive) was flooded, and Tony's car had lost its brakes. No one was out at that hour. He kept driving into curbs in order to slow down. He had to get to the coroner's office.

His worst fear was confirmed. It was Dagmar. She had been crushed by a falling tree near the bandstand. Tony remembered having to check for birthmarks to be certain.

The memory is still painful for the family. They would never again enter Lakewood Park. On her deathbed decades later, Beatrice Dolejs spoke of the daughter she had lost to the raging storm.

The warning that should have come

Dick Goddard later wrote in his weather guide that for 12 hours after the storm devastated Lakewood Park, severe thunderstorms pounded the region, causing the worst seasonal flooding in the state's history. Contrary to local lore, there were no tornadoes. When the storm was over, 42 people were dead in Northeast Ohio; most drowned during flooding. Elsewhere in the region, 250,000 homes lost power, hundreds of vacationers on the Lake Erie islands were stranded and more than 100 boats went missing.

Reviewing the devastation the next day in his office, Goddard got a phone call. A man told him he had been at Huntington Beach in Bay Village the previous day. Without wind or warning, the water level had risen 2 feet.

Goddard recognized the phenomenon known as a lake seiche (pronounced saysh). It is caused by unequal air pressure over a bound body of water and is usually associated with seismic activity or tsunamis.

Two months later, the National Weather Service in Washington, D.C., reprimanded the Detroit office for failing to alert the Cleveland National Weather Service that the storms were on their way.

Though a weatherman knows never to say never, Goddard says today's Doppler radar is a vast improvement over the old equipment.

"The warning time for a thunderstorm or tornado used to be one to two minutes," he said. "Now it's as much as 12 minutes. Today's radar is so good, it can pick up a swarm of bees."

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